In this first video, I demonstrate an exercise Donna Eden gave me in January 2007, which I named Swimming the Aura. It was opening night at a certification class, where Donna had just led the entire room through the Daily Energy Routine. She looked into the audience and saw in me what I already knew – that my aura was still detached and depleted, though we had all just done an exercise that for most people strengthens the aura (Donna’s Celtic Weave). She pulled me up on stage and gave me this simple technique to try, which instantly connected my aura to my body and also gave it a feeling of substance that until then I had never detected. Mind you, I had been faithfully attempting to build and weave my own aura, several times a day, for about 3 years at that point. Before learning this exercise, it felt as though I was moving my hands through thin air, never finding any energy to connect with. Swimming the Aura gave me substance and connection very quickly. After I have done the exercise, there is a very tangible energetic lusciousness in my aura that I can weave and work with, tracing beneficial shapes into it, adding art to it according to my own daily creative impulse. And it is connected to me – not just wandering around somewhere nearby! 🙂

Our aura is our body’s energetic atmosphere, with many important jobs. One of these jobs is protection. The aura, when healthy, is securely attached to the physical body, is free of holes, spreads at least a foot beyond the fingertips when arms are extended, is filled with figure 8s and infinity signs, and has a fresh, lively resiliency. It helps protect us from energies we don’t need, lets us take in those we do need, helps us release what is ready to leave, and facilitates a back and forth communication with our environment. It does much more, but this is plenty for the current discussion!

When the aura is detached and/or depleted (mine was both), it tries its best but can’t really protect you. Despite my own best efforts, I constantly found other people’s unidentified sorrow and pain bombarding my eyes (hard to describe, but real), and I was quickly drained in the presence of even the smallest groups of people. This was a problem in my life, since I have always attended many concerts, kids’ events, museums, classes, farmers’ markets, libraries, grocery stores, meetings – you name it. I had places to go and people to see, and the price was usually exhaustion to the bone. Even joyful or loving energy is too much, if you are already feeling overcrowded. When the aura is detached, there is open space between your aura and your physical body, and uninvited, unneeded energies can flow in. The same can happen if your aura is collapsed, depleted, wispy, or has holes. There really is such a thing as too much energy – it doesn’t have to be inherently negative. Too much is too much, and a healthy aura will help protect you from the too-much-ness that most of us encounter in today’s world.

Swimming the Aura had an immediate and dramatic healing impact on my aura, which quickly overflowed into my busy life. I suddenly found myself loving crowded events that once would have wiped me out, and my eyes became wonderfully free of the enormous human sorrows that used to latch onto them.

Donna herself quickly forgot about the exercise soon after she gave it to me, never mentioning it again until I reminded her of it at an advanced class three years ago. But I have shared this exercise with more people than I can count. I wrote it up in a hand-out, a few years ago, that I will post here soon. I named it Swimming the Aura, not only because I am a swimmer, but because it feels to me that I am actively swimming my aura to resiliency and connection. I am not swimming in it – I am swimming the aura itself. My aura is being swum to resiliency. That is how it feels to me. I hope you enjoy it.